Downfall. Der Untergang. Nominated for Oscar best foreign language film last year. Mike first told me about this film saying it's on his all time top 2 list. It was so good that it made him have sympathy for Hilter. I was scared of hearing him talking about sympathy for Hilter and going down that path, so I did not encourage our discussion until I could see the film myself. It is a very well made film.

Downfall is about the last days of Hilter and WWII Berlin, based on the autobiography of a young secretary and a Hitler historian. We have all seen many WWII movies told from the winner's side. Most movies depict Nazi Germans as a one- or at most two-dimensional beings--the Nazi's were either purely evil, or with a few men having some conscience. This film, however, portrays the Nazi Germans as 3-dimensional real people. They might not be healthy-minded, humanity-loving people, but they are still people. (Another WWII film told from the German point of view is Das Boot, excellent excellent film. Unlike Saving Private Ryan and many others which glorify wars and simplify issues such as justice and human survival, Das Boot is an anti-war movie.)

In Downfall, Hilter is an old man who grows old everyday, and is losing his mind. We see him in private life. He is kind to subordinates like his secretaries, and reasonably caring for his closed ones, but strict toward the military and the German people as a whole. He tries to be reasonable and heroic, and truthful to his ideals. He wants to die for his causes, and so do many of his last followers. We can only say he is a madman. But can we say he represents pure evil?

I remember whenever the sort of discussions on "love your enemy", "love all people, for we are One Life together" come up, the suspicious always asks, "what about Hilter? how should we love him? how do we explain the existence of such pure evil?" In the western world, Hilter is synonymous with the concept of pure evil; nobody sees him as a human being. How to put Hilter and universal love in one consistent world view is a difficult and sensitive task. My answer is something along this line--Hilter was a man with defects, like most of us, but due to the social and political position he was in at the time, his defects unfortunately was fatal for millions of people and destructive to civilization. His existence caused a large disturbance in the human history. Hilter was totally idealistic, but in a defective way. He and his followers were very passionate about their belief. They wanted to make the world a "better" place for their people. When Hilter realized his war was lost, he grieved, felt defeated, got married, and commited suicide. Many of his followers killed themselves for their cause. There was a Nazi mother who would rather kill her six children than letting them live in a world without National Socialism. (Here I can argue the suicide act is not an act of bravery. On the contary, it shows how their belief leads to a dead end. The "good" ideals should preserve and cherish life.)

Hilter and many of his die-hard followers really believed in building of a perfect world. They wanted to rid the world of "inferior" people for his own people. In simple words we say he did not believe in racial equality. There are many people like him, in one way or another. Some might want to rid the world of people with different religious beliefs, or different political ideas, or different sexual orientations, or different work ethics, or different value systems.... They assign a value to the natural human difference, and they consider their own is superior. These are all defects of being human. If nowadays we hear someone says, those who lies should be punished; or those who does not practice American democracy should die; or those who are lazy deserve to be poor.... these words sound just as arrogant and unsympathetic as those of Hilter. Of course the strong, the honest, the generous, the hard working people are the positive traits our society encourages. But we must realize the difference in people, and celebrate our difference, good or bad, strong or weak.... Who are we to make moral judgement of others? Who are we to design a "perfect" world and subject others to follow?

Here's a question. Does a perfect world exist? Or one step back, what is a perfect world? Is there a standard for perfection? Who decide?

Perhaps we can learn a lesson here, that anyone who is arrogant in thinking himself superior in one way or another, is in danger of going down a path like Hilter. Hilter is unsympathetic to the weak and the wounded. He did not care about the lives of even his own people during the last stage of the war. He said if his people could not win the war and bring victory, it was their own fault and they deserved to die. To most of us this sounds like a madman speaking. Or a mad machine. Yes, sometimes I think Hilter and his followers operated like machines. They had lost compassion for people. They had lost any thinking capacity.

Nobody is pure evil. Well, maybe the Sith emperor in Star Wars is evil, but it's fictional and symbolic and he symbolize the dark side which means evil. Hilter is not pure evil. He is sadly blinded. His end is unhappy, like all his followers. Only those who asks for redemption has a chance to become a whole human being again. So, here we also learn that any defect in a person can be fatal to the final happiness. I am also thinking, perhaps nobody who dies for a cause can really die in peace. I don't know who will die in peace unless he dies a natural death. I'm thinking about all those Jedis who died in the Jedi purge. And those Nazi officiers and soldiers who committed suicide in the end because they wanted to die for their cause. These are men who have lost all faculty of thinking. Maybe we can say they are no longer human beings. They are merely machines. The arrogance of the Nazi party has turned men into machines. From this we can conclude that arrogance and any form of prejudice is fatal for our happiness, because it kills us and makes us machines. Think about Darth Vadar. When he goes toward the dark side, he is dead, and symbolically he looks like a machine. So, may we say that being human is to resist going to the dark side; being evil or being godly are not human characteristics, for anyone who is purely bad or purely good is no longer in a position to freely choose and therefore not human. Being purely good represents happiness and being evil represents passion. This "conclusion" is similar to what I thought earlier, about how evil people are always so passionate about their pursuit of the darkness. I don't know of any "evil" person who is lazy (laziness is not a trait of being evil, apparently). Can we also say, evil is part of life? Evil is a balance of the goodness and therefore neccessary in the universe? If evil is the opposite of goodness, then yes, evil must exist for the existence of goodness. But is that so? What is evil? What is the definition of evil? Does evil really exist? I know many many many philosophers have thought about the question, and it's unlikely I will give a satisfactory answer. But hey, they are not me so what answer satisfies me is enough for me. Hmmm....

Actually, I don't even believe in the concept of evil! And the goodness? No. Now I will turn to Shakespeare, a quote I read yesterday. There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. This I totally agree. In my ideal world, everybody thinks the same way as me. But in a ideal ideal world, many people think differently from me. The world we are living in is an ideal world for me. It is what it is supposed to be. My life is neither good or bad, but I will be more pleased if my life is enjoayble. Thinking, learning, discovery, friendship, love, beauty, enlightenment, humor, life, goodness, colors, flavors, music, nature.... these are things that make my life enjoyable. Therefore I live for these.

(But I hate when I cannot write with a clear thread of thoughts. My thoughts are so scattered and my writing is so confused. Writing is a linear process but my brain works with so many simulaneous thoughts. I must learn to write like a normal person if I want to communicate with others.)

Continue. There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. This does not say that thinking is good or bad. It merely states a "fact" that all the values we have for the things are from our thinking process. Of cousre to be human is to think. Also to be human is to have joy and sorrow. Unless we think for fun, like gods. Gods are happy but they are not alive. This is something we need to recognize, but no need to change.

sometime end of may, 2005